Getting Specific About Psychological Inertia

• Author: Glenn D. Walters
• Published date: 01 June 2018
• Date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016817704697
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Getting Specific About

Psychological Inertia:

Mediating the Past

Crime–Future Crime

Relationship With Self-Efficacy

for a Conventional Lifestyle

Glenn D. Walters

1

Abstract

A three-wave mediational analysis with two parallel mediators was performed on prospective data

provided by all 1,354 (1,170 boys, 184 girls) members of the Pathways to Desistance study. In the

analysis, baseline variety of offending scores (Wave 0) served as the independent variable, Wave 2

variety offending scores served as the dependent variable, and Wave 1 self-efficacy for conventional

behavior and general confidence in avoiding future legal trouble served as mediators. Controlling for

age, sex, race, parental socioeconomic status, callous/unemotional traits, and moral disengagement,

it was determined that only self-efficacy for a conventional lifestyle successfully mediated the past

delinquency–future delinquency relationship. From both a theoretical and practical standpoint, the

current results indicate that efficacy expectancies specific to participating in a conventional lifestyle

are more important in preventing subsequent delinquency than simple confidence in one’s ability to

avoid future legal trouble.

Keywords

crime continuity, delinquency, self-efficacy, avoiding police contact

Despite the fact past crime is one of the best predictors of future crime (Gendreau, Little, & Goggin,

1996), there is little consensus as to the nature and meaning of this relationship. The past crime–

future crime relationship, commonly referred to as crime continuity, has been attributed to one of the

two processes: population heterogeneity and state dependence (Nagin & Paternoster, 2000).

Whereas population heterogeneity holds that crime continuity is a consequence of time-stable

characteristics that increase propensity for delinquency and crime at different points in a person’s

life, state dependence maintains that involvement in prior delinquency or crime fundamentally alters

1

Department of Criminal Justice, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Glenn D. Walters, Department of Criminal Justice, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA 19530, USA.

Email: walters@kutztown.edu

Criminal Justice Review

2018, Vol. 43(2) 186-201

ª2017 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/0734016817704697

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a person’s odds of future involvement in delinquency and crime. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990)

general theory of crime provides a population heterogeneity explanation for crime continuity

whereby individuals low in self-control ar e at risk for criminality as both juveniles and ad ults

because of the time-stable nature of relative self-control. Labeling theory (Lemert, 1972) offers a

different perspective on crime continuity by advancing a state dependence interpretation of crime

stability. Involvement in primary deviance or initial offending, which is often marked by weak

population heterogeneity, sets off a chain of events, such as reduced opportunities for participation

in conventional roles and limited ability to assume a conventional identity (Becker, 1963), which

then serve to augment the individual’s chances of engaging in secondary deviance or subsequent

offending. Hence, early delinquent involvement increases the odds of a person’s future involvement

in delinquency.

Nagin and Paternoster (2000) contend that population heterogeneity and state dependence are

neither mutually exclusive nor inherently incompatible. Although the trend has been for investiga-

tions using official arrest and conviction data in samples of moderate- to high-risk individuals to

produce results more favorable to the population heterogeneity hypothesis (Paternoster, Dean,

Piquero, Mazerrolle, & Brame, 1997) and for studies examining self-reported offending in groups

of lower risk individuals to be more congruent with the state dependence hypothesis (Nagin &

Paternoster, 1991; Paternoster & Brame, 1997), most studies show some support for both hypotheses

(Bushway, Brame, & Paternoster, 1999; Ezell & Cohen, 2005; Nagin & Farrington, 1992; Nagin &

Paternoster, 1991; Paternoster & Brame, 1997; Paternoster et al., 1997). Analyzing criminal career

data on two large Dutch samples, one in which the dependent variable was convictions for a violent

or property crime and the other of which was self-reported involvement in violent and property

crime, Blokland and Nieuwbeerta (2010) garnered support for both the population heterogeneity and

state dependence explanations of crime continuity. They further determined that dynamic (state

dependent) factors explained t he majority of the variance in crime co ntinuity for self-reported

violent and property offending and all but a negligible amount of the variance in crime continuity

in convictions for violent and property crime.

Psychological Inertia

Besides the population heterogeneity and state dependence explanations of crime continuity, there is

also a social cognitive explanation. This social cognitive explanation has been labeled psychological

inertia by Walters (2016a). The basic premise of the psychological inertia theorem of crime con-

tinuity is that the past crime–future crime relationship is mediated by quasi-time-stable social

cognitive variables. According to the psychological inertia theorem, crime continuity is the result

of social cognitive variables that link past crime to future crime. Research, in fact, indicates that such

social cognitive variables as general criminal thinking, goals and values, broadly defined outcome

expectancies for crime, and confidence in one’s ability to avoid future arrest are capable of mediat-

ing the past crime–future crime relationship (Walters, 2015a, 2015c, 2016a; Walters & DeLisi,

2013). The purpose of the current investigation was to determine whether self-efficacy for a con-

ventional lifestyle mediates the past crime–future crime relationship through a process of psycho-

logical inertia.

A recent trend in research on psychological inertia is to more clearly and precisely define the

social cognitive variables res ponsible for mediating crime c ontinuity via psychological ine rtia.

Results from two studies, for instance, have shown that reactive (impulsive, emotional) but not

proactive (planned, calculated) criminal thinking connects prior delinquency to future criminality

through a process of psychological inertia (Walters, 2016b, in press-b). This supports the presence of

psychological inertia in the control model of criminal lifestyle development, given that reactive

criminal thinking is the principal mediator of the control model (Walters, 2017). It leaves

Walters 187